Microsoft launches Lumia 430, most affordable Lumia at $70

At a time when several mobile manufacturers like Lenovo and Xiaomi are launching device after device to get a larger share of India’s budget smartphone market, Microsoft has also added one more warrior to its army today dubbed Microsoft Lumia 430. Priced in a highly competitive fashion at $70 (Rs. 4,200 INR approximately), this is company’s most affordable Lumia offering to the date. And needless to say that company itself is touting it as such!

Another surprise about Lumia 430 is its similarity with Lumia 435. There’s not any difference in the specs sheets of both devices, but still this one costs $10 less.

While it certainly lacks those gorgeous pixel-packed displays or megapixel-packed camera lenses, it remains quite successful in providing a good enough smartphone experience to budget buyers, especially those who’re buying their first smartphone. It comes with Dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 200 processor,1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, up to 128GB of expandable storage, 2MP primary camera, VGA secondary camera and a 4-inches large WVGA display (480×800 pixels). And yes, you also get up to 15GB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage with this device.

While there’re significant shortcomings in departments of display and camera, there’s one major breakthrough as well. The Windows Phone 8.1 OS based device is upgradable to Windows Phone 10 so its buyers will be able to get the taste of Microsoft’s upcoming mobile OS. This will make the complete MS-Office suite along with a great new Files and Folder manager available on the device after upgrading to Windows 10.

It isn’t surprising that Microsoft has decided to launch this new device in select regions only – after all, this is obviously not a device for every region. The regions where it’ll be available include Asia Pacific, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Middle East and Africa. The device will be available in these regions from next month, so not much time is remaining in the launch.

On the other hand, if you’re waiting for launch of a middle-range or high-end device from the company then I would like to tell you that your wait may become longer than expected. Microsoft has already said that it won’t be launching any new flagship device before the launch of Windows 10. The company has promised to launch Windows 10 this summer, but since previews of its mobile version are lagging far behind it seems like company won’t be able to launch any new flagship this summer despite the launch of Windows 10. Whatever happens, one thing is clear here – no flagship is coming out of Redmond anytime soon!